the natural philosophy of greed

More insights from Naomi Klein, as to why greed has become the only game in town:

Thanks a million, Ayn Rand, for setting the greedy free
The trickle-down theory beloved of Greenspan and his ilk is less a philosophy than a handy excuse for avarice

Now she should talk that greed thing through with her agent and publisher, because I would have bought her book if it wasn't so bloody expensive ... :) Oh well, I'll just wait for the paperback.


PS (July 2010) Seeing that this page seems to pop up frequently when people google for the terms "philosphy + greed", I'm thinking of adding some value to it. While I haven't studied the philosophy of greed as such, I have written a (tongue in cheek) piece about the thermodynamics of greed. Specifically, I find it puzzling that, while the third law of thermodynamics states that overall disorder must increase, so all "sorting" activities must be paid for by creating random mixtures elsewhere, the economy tends to be driven by forces that make rich people richer and poor people poorer, so reduces entropy. That piece was published in German in Nachrichten aus der Chemie in April 2007 and will feature in my next German book due to appear in 2011. Might do an English version for the blog, watch this space.